Kayoko Honkawa came back to visit Dolores DiRezza's grave this week. She stayed with Dolores' mother, BeBe, when she was in Otero Junior College and became fast friends with Dodo, as Dolores was known to her friends and family. She had also stayed with me, earlier, so she stayed at my house when she visited. I was honored to have such a gracious guest.

Kayoko visited with many friends around town as well as with the DiRezzas. She spent some time with her college friend, Jennifer Logan, and with her college teachers Judy Hensley and Tim Walsh, as well as her library friend, Liz Roberts. I probably first noticed Kayoko because she was writing about her American adventure in her daily journal, in English.

I had been Kayoko's English teacher. When she first came to this country, she spoke very little English. Jennifer befriended her in the English class, which was made up almost entirely of Japanese students. I learned a lot from the Japanese students. First, I learned how hard they work. Then I learned how nice they are, socially. We had many little get-togethers at my house. She was not very happy in the home where she was staying, and pretty soon, her friend Takashi Hara asked if she could live with me. She was a wonderful house guest and helped out a lot.

When she graduated from OJC, she went back to Japan. Seventeen years have passed. Kayoko told Hensley how she met her husband, Hiro Honkawa. They were both working for Panasonic, in different departments. Honkawa was fascinated with American football, and when he learned Kayoko had lived in America, they started seeing each other outside work, the beginning of a great romance.

Kayoko had taken up running, so right after they were married, Hiro suggested they run a marathon in Hawaii. "It was so funny," said Kayoko. "I finished race and then couldn't find him." It turned out that she had run the race in four and a half hours, but it took him five and a half hours. He was more of a short distance runner, she said. Kayoko is staying home with the children now, and Hiro was taking care of them this week, so she could make her journey to honor Dodo's memory.

She had no car during the morning on Tuesday, the day she left La Junta, but she managed to do all the things she had planned. So I am thinking, if you saw a slender young Japanese woman running around La Junta on Tuesday, it was probably Kayoko Honkawa.